I want to declare Annotations as transcriptions and/or translations.

[mathewjordan]

Description

You have a set of manuscripts in Arabic script that are represented as IIIF Manifests. The manuscripts have been transcribed in Arabic and translated to English. As part of a digital scholarship project, you would like to apply the transcriptions and translations as Annotations upon each Canvas, and have a way to inform the presentation layer which Annotations are transcriptions and which are translations so that they can be displayed appropriately.

Variation(s)

• This use case applies a verbatim transcription of an Arabic manuscript along with an English language translation; however, there is no limitation on the number of translations that could be applied to the respective resources.

• In another project focused wholly on transcriptions, more than one language may be present on a resource, requiring multiple Annotations with respective language properties. In that case, all Annotations of varying languages are transcribing and NOT translating.

Proposed Solutions

Introduce the Motivations of transcribing and translating to properly declare "why" the Annotation is being applied to the respective resource.

https://github.com/mathewjordan/iiif/blob/main/manifest/tsg/transcribing-translating.json#L176-L207

"annotations": [
  {
    "id": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mathewjordan/iiif/main/manifest/tsg/transcribing-translating/canvas/2/annotations",
    "type": "AnnotationPage",
    "items": [
      {
        "id": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mathewjordan/iiif/main/manifest/tsg/transcribing-translating/canvas/2/annotations/transcription",
        "type": "Annotation",
        "motivation": "transcribing",
        "body": {
          "type": "TextualBody",
          "language": "ar",
          "format": "text/plain",
          "value": "بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم وصلي الله على نبيه الكريم محمد خير الانام وعلى آله وأصحابه النجوم الحمد لله السلام المؤمن المحسن سبحانه هو الملك التواب الرحيم الرقيب المهيمن  .\n\n‏والسلمان على الصراط المستقيم التقي النقي الصادق المخلص المتخلق بالخلق العظيم المراقب المشاهد عين المعرف الأقو العبد المتصف بصفات سيد الأعظم ورضوان الاتم عن ناصر الحق بالحق الهادي إلى صراطك المستقيم وعلى آله حق قدره ومقداره العظيم اما بعد .\n \n‏ فقد وقفت على كتابك الكريم و خطابك السليم أيها المحب الأرضى والقدوة المرتضى عمر بن مالك لطف بنا وبك المالك ووقفت على سؤالكم عن مقامات الدين الثلاث وما لها من المنازل وما حقيقة تلك الخصال وقد تكلم السيد العارف بالله عبيدة ابن انبوجة فيه في الميزاب في مباحث طويلة وحيث لم نجد فيه مقنعا في ذلك فهاك مني ما امكن لي كتبه مما يتعلق به خاطري و نصه.\n"
        },
        "target": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mathewjordan/iiif/main/manifest/tsg/transcribing-translating/canvas/2"
      },
      {
        "id": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mathewjordan/iiif/main/manifest/tsg/transcribing-translating/canvas/2/annotations/translation",
        "type": "Annotation",
        "motivation": "translating",
        "body": {
          "type": "TextualBody",
          "language": "en",
          "format": "text/plain",
          "value": "[Foreword] \n\nIn the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. May God bless our Noble Prophet Muḥammad, the best of all creation, and his family and his companions, the stars.1 \n\nAll praise is due to God, the (source of) peace, the grantor of faith, the guide to excellence, Exalted is He. He is the King, the Acceptor of Repentance, the Merciful, the Watchful, and the Protector. \n\nMay peace and blessings (al-salāmān) be upon (Muḥammad,) the straight path, the consciously aware, the pure, the truthful, the sincere, endowed with magnificent character, the contemplative, the witness, the source of the most perfect divine knowledge, the servant2 described with the attributes of the Greatest Master. May God’s utmost satisfaction be upon the one who makes the Truth victorious by the Truth, the guide to the straight path, and upon his family, in accordance with his rank and his immense degree.3 \n\nI have received your noble letter and your cogent message, O ʿUmar, son of Mālik,4 most pleasing lover and model of God’s satisfaction, may the Proprietor (al-Mālik)5 treat us and you with kindness. I have also received your questions concerning the three stations (maqāmāt) of religion, the corresponding abodes (manāzil), and the realities of these properties. The knower of God Sayyid ʿUbayda ibn Anbūja spoke about this in (his book) al-Mīzāb6 in long sections. As you have not found there what satisfied you regarding these matters, here is what I was able to write down from my recollection. \n\nThis is the text: "
        },
        "target": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mathewjordan/iiif/main/manifest/tsg/transcribing-translating/canvas/2"
      }
    ]
  }
]

Additional Background

If considered, translating and transcribing are applied supplementing motivations as they integrate content “from the Canvas.” IIIF Viewers such as Mirador output textual bodies in a desirable fashion for Annotations with the viewer-supported commenting motivation, however, this Motivation is not aligned with why the Annotation is being applied. In either case, if commenting or supplementing are utilized, there is no way to distinguish if the Annotations translate or transcribe the annotated resource. A user or a bespoke IIIF viewer would be required to infer that that one is a transcription and/or translation by language. Likewise, an Annotation adding commentary could not be distinguished from a translation or transcription of the resource.

---

Web Annotation Data Model - 3.3.5 Motivation and Purpose

commenting

The motivation for when the user intends to comment about the Target. For example to provide a commentary about a particular PDF document.

---

IIIF Presentation API 3.0 - 3.5 Values - Values for motivation

supplementing

Resources associated with a Canvas by an Annotation that has the motivation value supplementing may be presented to the user as part of the representation of the Canvas, or may be presented in a different part of the user interface. The content can be thought of as being from the Canvas...

---

See two Annotations with the Motivation of commenting using Mirador: https://projectmirador.org/embed/?iiif-content=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mathewjordan/iiif/main/manifest/tsg/commenting.json

[ThanGrove]

The Life of the Buddha project is an actual use-case for this. It currently uses the old Open Annotation motivations, oa:transcribing and oa:translating, to display transcriptions and translations of Tibetan texts that accompany several murals, associated with SVG outline annotations. An example of the current annotation list is here. We are upgrading and would certainly use these motivations if they were in the specification.

[glenrobson]

There is also this proof of concept from the Mmmonk project:

https://www.mmmonk.be/en/about-iiif/iiif-demo-liber-floridus

[mathewjordan]

Thanks @glenrobson. I'll also add some additional context with screenshots for the component I am developing for a DH project. A different view using the same Manifests referenced above.

[glenrobson]

Another usecase from the cookbook repo regarding linking to ALTO and having annotations:

https://github.com/IIIF/cookbook-recipes/issues/437

[elynema]

@mathewjordan Did you say you added screenshots for your current project work? I'm not seeing them in the story (just the original Mirador example).

[mathewjordan]

Thank you @elynema. I forgot to attach. This is still in progress. But current state should convey direction of development. The general idea is that researcher using this IIIF component (dare I say viewer) can use the interface to distinguish between and search within the different textual bodies of the Annotations.